As the information technology marketplace continues to push computers and networking systems towards ever greater performance, optical networks are being developed to handle the increased speeds and to provide the greater bandwidth necessary for moving large amounts of data. Interconnecting the optical fibers and waveguides forming these advanced networks continues to be a challenging due to limitations in existing optical couplers that are used to combine optical signals from several light sources and to redistribute the combined signals to multiple output channels and/or detectors.
New devices and methods are needed to provide more flexibility, and hence efficiency, in routing optical signals between optical fibers or waveguides, and that allow for the number (N) of input channels to be different than the number (M) of output channels.